When Loneliness Crushes Your Heart

Karen

The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”

—Jeremiah 31:3

I will never forget the day of my senior prom. Not because I had a handsome date who swept me off my feet as we danced the night away—that wasn’t the case. Not because I was able to purchase the perfect dress I’d always dreamed of wearing; I wasn’t. Not even because I went with a group of girlfriends who all decided to go stag and then had a blast doing “the bump” on the dance floor together. (Hey, it was the mid-eighties, and “the bump” was all the rage!)

No, I remember the occasion vividly because it was the day I decorated the school gym, set up the food buffet, and then went home to spend the evening with the cast from The Dukes of Hazzard as my only companions.

I was on the prom committee that hung streamers and set out vases of fresh flowers to help make the evening magical. And because I worked at the restaurant chosen to cater the finger foods, I also carved a watermelon, filled it with fresh fruit, and brought it, along with platters of cheese and crackers and other assorted hors d’oeuvres, for the excited attendees to enjoy.

But there would be no prom night for me. I hadn’t been asked to go. My senior year of high school wasn’t really a time of fun and friends. It was a year full of sorrow and rejection, of many nights spent home all alone, feeling left out and unloved.

In elementary and middle school I seemed to have little trouble finding friends to call my own. But in the eighth grade, after repeating some gossip about a girl in my class, I lost a slew of friends. I was banished from the popular table at lunch and forced to find a new group of friends.

This smaller group of friends sufficed throughout my first half of high school. But then during the fall of my junior year, I turned my life over to Christ. This life-altering decision meant there were parties I would not attend and activities I simply had no interest in engaging in. My circle of friends grew smaller and smaller.

Mentally reliving this time brings back sadness, but it also reminds me that this was the exact season of life that catapulted me into the arms of Jesus.

Today’s verse describes the deep love of God—unfailing, everlasting. Complete and thorough. With no signs of stopping.

Prom flowers wither. Cliques and schoolyard statuses soon go away. But we will never be found lacking when it comes to the love of our heavenly Father.

If you have a lonely and trampled heart, soothe it with the comfort of this mind-blowing truth: God loves you forever and will never leave you. The end.

Father, thank You for how You always welcome me and have never rejected me. Not only have You loved me in the past, but You will love me forever. I am blessed to know Your steadfast, perfect, unmatchable love. In Jesus’ name, amen.

In what part of your life do you most need to feel the everlasting love and unfailing kindness of God?